Daily Times

China’s fiscal revenue rose 3.8 percent year on year to over 8.99 trillion yuan (about 1.3 trillion US dollars) in the first five months of 2019, data showed Friday.

The central government collected about 4.34 trillion yuan in fiscal revenue during the period, up 3.6 percent year on year, while local governments saw fiscal revenue up 3.9 percent to around 4.65 trillion yuan, according to statistics from the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

In breakdown, revenue from individual income tax plunged 30.7 percent to 477.8 billion yuan. Revenue from stock trading stamp tax rose 14.7 percent over the same period last year to 69 billion yuan, while that from tariffs dropped by 6.2 percent, MOF data showed.

China’s fiscal spending expanded 12.5 percent year on year to 9.3 trillion yuan during the January-May period, the MOF data showed, with social security and employment and education taking the lion’s share.

The country’s expenditure on transport, energy conservation and environmental protection, as well as science and technology, kept fast-paced growth, up 32.7 percent, 29.8 percent and 29.3 percent, respectively, compared to the same period last year.

China will implement an employment-first policy this year, aiming to create more than 11 million new urban jobs, according to the government work report delivered to the annual session of China’s top legislature on March 5.

The country will maintain a proactive fiscal policy stance in 2019, with a higher deficit-to-GDP ratio to leave policy space to address potential risks.

Annual employment goal

Half of China’s employment objective this year has been achieved in the first five months, with the employment situation generally stable, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

China had created 5.97 million new urban job opportunities by the end of May 2019, finishing 54 percent of the plan for the whole year, NBS data showed.

The national surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5 percent in May 2019, the same as that of April. The surveyed urban unemployment rate of people aged 25 to 59 years old declined for the third consecutive month, down 0.2 percentage points to 4.5 percent, while that of 31 major cities went flat at 5 percent.

Average weekly working time of enterprise employees nationwide increased, up 0.5 hours to 46.3 hours year on year.

Liquidity support

China’s central bank decided Friday to beef up liquidity support for medium and small-sized banks by increasing the re-discount and standing lending facility (SLF) quota.

The People’s Bank of China arranged 200 billion yuan (about 29 billion U.S. dollars) re-discount and 100 billion yuan SLF quota for medium and small-sized banks to keep their liquidity sufficient, it said in a statement.

The medium and small-sized banks can apply for the liquidity support by using qualified bonds, interbank negotiable certificates of deposit and bills as collateral.

To maintain stable liquidity in the middle of the year, the central bank Friday pumped 100 billion yuan into the financial system through the operations with 28-day reverse repos at an interest rate of 2.85 percent.